Skipocrisy?

Frequently, my wife question the impact that alpine skiing, in its most popular form has on our environment. I respond that snow-making might be of concern, but eventually man-made snow runs off and is in fact recycled. 

What I conveniently forget to add is that it takes energy to compress the air that blow the mixture up into the air, and in Park City, our electrical power is still mostly made of fossil fuels that spew CO2 in the air...

Videoscopy of a schoolmate ...

Recently, I was watching a video interview between Jean-Marie Peyrin, a former buddy of mine at the Cluses School of Watchmaking by Kristin Marion for a local radio station, near Annecy, France. 

Kristin started singing jazz at the age of 26, and has trained in jazz vocal and has participated in many workshops in schools and with jazz musicians. She completed her voice training in the US with online sessions at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. Since August 2014 she has been the official Jazz Education Network representative in France. 

In this informative and captivating exchange, Jean-Marie explains to us how he managed to merge Jazz and Watchmaking and retains an intense passion for both fields which don’t seem to have much in common. 

I was also very impressed by the depth of knowledge of my former classmate and air force buddy (yes, we both served together in Salon de Provence, the equivalent of Colorado Springs Air Force Academy!) He knows his stuff and it shows. 

Although the exchange lasts 38 minutes, if you understand French, I recommend that you invest some of your free-time to watch it! 

France’s maverick mountain mayor…

Near my hometown in the French Alps is the ski town of Châtel, that sits next door to another one in Switzerland, called Morgins. Both are part of one of the largest Alpine ski interconnect known as “Portes du Soleil”. 

Nicolas Rubin is Châtel’s mayor and a maverick of sorts. He is now challenging French President Macron’s edict to keep ski resorts shut down till sometime in January, if signs of a tapering off Covid-19 are materializing. He can’t understand that his Swiss neighbor Morgins, can stay open while he has to keep his community out of business.

To express his discontent, he’s plastered Châtel’s City Hall with Swiss flags, as he likes to say that “Châtel is the most Swiss of all French resorts!” 

To borrow a page from Trump’s bold playbook, Rubin might try to annex Switzerland like the US wanted to do the same with Greenland, and the embattled mayor should also build a wall west of Châtel and have Macron pay for it! 

Of course, to add insult to injury, Macron now wants to punish French skiers who’d dare ski abroad, like in Switzerland, by imposing a quarantine upon their return from their ski holiday. This has prompted the French ski area association to sue the government. 

To be continued...

Should I ask Trump for a pardon?

While Donald Trump probably believes that he should pardon himself, including his own family, cronies and friend as a preemptive measure to shelter him from the deluge of legal actions waiting as soon as he exits the White House, I have myself wondering if I shouldn’t ask him for a preemptive pardon too. 

I don’t intend to rob a bank, nor to commit any major crime, but I would love to do one simple thing while I’m alive. 

If and when I get that Tesla that has been in on my wish-list for a while, I intend to test it on Interstate 80, and particularly climbing the 6% grade preceding Parley Summit to see if I can get any close to the 155 mph announced for the model I covet. 

That pardon would embolden me to try it as it would guarantee me some modicum of protection in case a Utah Highway Patrol car happens to be around and considering that we're in a 65 mph zone…

How safe is skiing under Covid?

I’ve already been skiing a few times this season and have not really felt the threat of Covid-19 contamination, but again, how can we say that we “feel” that? 

While the distancing in ski lines is a bit “elastic”, it is what it is, as long as I’m protected by an all-encompassing balaclava plus my goggles. When I’m riding the lifts (two or three strangers respectively together in the same quad, gondola, or six-pack) and when I ski down the hill, I experience the total freedom inherent with our sport. 

In summary, skiing is apparently less risky than going shopping or flying three passengers sitting in a triple row. So why is the French government (prodded by Germany’s) keeping their ski lifts shut down till January 2021? This hardly seems justifiable, or am I missing something?

The downside of sparsely loaded lifts obviously is reduced uphill capacity and long lines or limitations in the numbers of skiers allowed on a given mountain, but aside from that, the pleasure and exhilaration of skiing is unaltered, at least in North America and in Switzerland or whatever other places allow it. 

Of course I’m not talking about piling up people inside tiny accommodations and controlling wild après-ski parties. This is the objective danger that nations should be concerned about and ready to control and clamp down on any abuse.

Curing insomnia…

I don’t about you, but I no longer sleep as tight as I used to, and this is simply because, as I age, my sleep has become much more lighter and my many dreams can be so vivid that they keep on waking me up. 

This is when I return to my old, proven method for falling asleep that I developed over years of extensive international travels when planes used to be pretty empty. 

What I do is quite simple: I mentally picture the vacant center row seats in the economy section of a wide body airplane, and I see and feel myself laying there comfortably, stretching as much as can and falling deeply asleep in spite of the roaring engine noise.

Generally that works pretty well, the image must have a potent impact upon my psyche and, during the early winter season, the noise of the snow-making guns, in the distance, adds to the realism, unless of course my insomnia problem is just “in my head” and is a bit trivial!

A November on steroids!

November is a transitional month that begins just after Halloween and ends after Thanksgiving. For us it’s usually marked with some natural snowfalls in various quantities and that’s when ski resorts open and start making artificial snow in earnest. 

We also have elections and this year was a big one. Up until now, and for the past four years, time has slowed down to a crawl as we were under the thumb of Dictator Trump.

In addition, this pandemic year, added more stress and dread to that tyranny, and also contributed to slow the normally speedy passage of time.

But now, with Trump leaving us soon and vaccines arriving to the rescue, fast times are back, so hang on to your seats and don’t wonder why November went in a flash!